Client: Troutman Sanders LLP
Industry: Legal
Solution: 3 DD460, 4 DD430,
and 6 DD410 systems. Data Domain Replicator software.
Company
Troutman Sanders LLP, founded in 1897, is an Atlanta-based international law firm
with over 600 attorneys serving clients from offices in Atlanta, Hong Kong, London, New
York, Norfolk, Raleigh, Richmond, Tysons Corner, Virginia Beach and Washington, D.C. The
full-service firm offers a broad array of over 30 practice areas including corporate,
finance, real estate, litigation and public law.
Customer Challenges
While data availability is critical for virtually all companies, the legal industry
presents its IT managers with unique challenges. John Thomas, IT Manager for Troutman
Sanders, notes that the legal environment “…is unlike any other I’ve
worked in. Very demanding. One hundred percent uptime is expected for all systems. If a
document for a case is overwritten, the attorneys need to have it back
immediately.”
In the legal field, a client’s case could be compromised or large dollars could
be lost from the unavailability of even a single document of an active case.
Troutman Sanders’ tape backup equipment had cycled through to its end of life
and it was time to look for a new solution. But the shortcomings of a tape-based backup
system had been brewing for some time and the demands of the legal environment just
exacerbated the need for change: “We had been dealing with tape…” says
Thomas. “…exposing ourselves to the risk of having tapes lost by shipping
companies, experiencing tape failures and facing all the security risks inherent to
tape. The firm and its data were both growing and ‘more of the same’ just
didn’t seem like a viable strategy for our backups going forward.”
With multiple sites conducting their own local backups, the scenario extended to
their disaster recovery efforts. Backup windows were elongating as capacity grew and
restores at remote sites were becoming difficult, often requiring travel to troubleshoot
systems to complete recoveries.
Data Domain Solution
While Troutman Sanders evaluated a variety of non-tape solutions, Thomas found that,
“Other solutions we looked at were software, then you had to combine that with
hardware and related media — and pretty soon the price got out of control. So
beyond all the benefits and efficiencies, the ‘bang for the buck’ with Data
Domain was a big part of the sell for us.”
Troutman Sanders initially piloted Data Domain restorers at its Hong Kong and D.C.
offices, WAN vaulting backup data from the 2 sites back to its headquarters in Atlanta
via existing T1 lines using Data Domain’s DD Replicator Software. With the success
of the intercontinental pilot, they moved forward with implementing a 12 site local
backup and remote disaster recovery plan, using a many-to-one configuration to replicate
remote office backup sets to Atlanta, which in turn replicated all backups to its
Richmond office. Both Atlanta and Richmond used Data Domain DD460 systems. A
combination of DD430 and DD410 systems were used for the balance of remote
offices.
Today, all data at all offices is available both locally for restores and also
remotely at the Atlanta and Richmond facilities. Most of Troutman’s existing
network infrastructure was able to be used for WAN vaulting data sets due to the
capacity optimization (massive data reduction) technology applied by the Data Domain
restorers. Management of all backups is now centralized and automated with disk-to-disk
backups. Currently, once a week, tape is used at the Richmond or Atlanta locations for
archiving. Tape technology has been completely eliminated at all other offices.
“After we finished implementing the Data Domain Restorers, I remember coming in on
Monday morning and, for thefirst time in five years, all of our backups were
completed,” says Thomas.
Business Benefits
With Data Domain restorers and DD Replicator software, Troutman Sanders has
eliminated both the operational and financial inefficiencies of their previous
tape-based backup processes.
Troutman’s sites currently backup approximately 50 TB of data.
Management of the geographically dispersed backup processes is now fully automated and
centrally controlled, significantly reducing administration costs and eliminating travel
costs for remote site system troubleshooting. Tape media purchases and store/retrieve
shipping and handling charges for the 12 offices have also been eliminated. Backup
windows have been reduced significantly as well. At one mid-sized site, for example,
Thomas notes that the backup time for 100 Gb of Exchange data was reduced from over 11
hours to just 55 minutes. Average compression ratios for the installed sites is
approximately 25x, with some site seeing in excess of 50x compression.
Perhaps most important of all, restores are now reliable and fast. Data
Domain’s Data Integrity Architecture verifies availability of data upon completion
of the backup. “The nice thing about backing up to disk is that restores are
nearly instantaneous,” says Thomas. “It actually takes us longer to drill
down through the backup software to locate a file than the time to restore
it.”
“After we finished implementing the Data Domain restorers, I remember
coming in on Monday morning and, for the first time in five years, all of our backups
were completed.”
John Thomas
IT Manager
Troutman Sanders LLP
